Broadcasters don’t like “tiny antennas,” sue TV streaming startup

A coalition of broadcasters has sued Aereo, a startup that plans to stream …

A coalition of major broadcasters has sued Aereo, a well-funded startup that hopes to offer New York residents television broadcasts streamed over the Internet. The broadcasters argue Aereo's business model violates their copyrights.

Aereo has a clever legal argument. Rather than capturing content with a single antenna, Aereo plans to have enough tiny physical antennas in its server room that each active user can be assigned his own personal antenna. Aereo claims it is effectively letting each customer use a "remote TV" whose antenna just happens to be located far away from its screen.

Ars Technica asked James Grimmelmann, a copyright scholar at New York Law School, to evaluate the case. While Grimmelmann thinks Aereo's convoluted business model wouldn't be necessary in a sane copyright system, he believes that the company has a good chance of winning in court.

Grimmelmann told us that the case is likely to hinge on a 2008 ruling that is emerging as a legal foundation for a number of innovative new business models. In that case, a federal appeals court ruled that Cablevision did not infringe copyright when it created a "remote DVR" system in which the physical DVR hardware was located in a Cablevision server room rather than the customer's living room.

Cablevision argued that it wasn't vulnerable to copyright infringement claims because the user, not Cablevision, was ultimately in control of which programs were recorded and played back using the system. The court agreed, and its reasoning depended on the fact that Cablevision stored a separate physical copy of a program for each user who requested it, rather than storing a single copy and streaming that copy to every user.

The thousands of tiny antennas in Aereo's server room is intended as an analogy to the thousands of redundant copies of TV programs created by Cablevision's remote DVR system. And Grimmelmann said the courts might buy it. He also suggested that Aereo's plan to limit the initial service to New York residents will strengthen the company's case. The company can argue that its customers are getting access to content they would already have access to on their TV if not for signal-strength problems.

Aereo could also argue, as competitor ivi did a year ago, that it is a cable company, and therefore eligible for a compulsory licensing regime Congress created to allow cable companies to re-transmit television broadcasts. But that argument went down in flames when ivi used it, and Grimmelmann predicts Aereo won't try to resurrect it.

"I'm surprisingly willing to believe that this might work," Grimmelmann said of Aereo's case. Given the close analogy to Cablevision decision, he said, Aereo has a "non-laughable case."

Timothy B. Lee
Timothy covers tech policy for Ars, with a particular focus on patent and copyright law, privacy, free speech, and open government. His writing has appeared in Slate, Reason, Wired, and the New York Times. Emailtimothy.lee@arstechnica.com//Twitter@binarybits

Does it matter? Sorry to be so defeatist about this, but even if Aereo wins, the industry will continue to appeal all the way to SCOTUS, and even if they fail there (or refuse to be heard), then they will go to congress (with their promises of bribes, er, campaign contributions) talking about how this is Jack-the-Ripper all over again.

Why does the antenna matter in the first place? This is over-the-air audio/video which is available to everyone for free. Why would broadcasters attempt to stop anyone from providing a service to allow consumers more access to their already freely available content?

Essentially a customer leases an antenna with a really long cable to their house. It's not retransmitted or rebroadcast... tv broadcasting, almost by definition, means deploying a signal over a large area to be received by large numbers of individuals. Why are we so screwed up here?

Does it matter? Sorry to be so defeatist about this, but even if Aereo wins, the industry will continue to appeal all the way to SCOTUS, and even if they fail there (or refuse to be heard), then they will go to congress (with their promises of bribes, er, campaign contributions) talking about how this is Jack-the-Ripper all over again.

I absolute understand your cynicism, but I can't help but smile dirty at this xD

Why does the antenna matter in the first place? This is over-the-air audio/video which is available to everyone for free. Why would broadcasters attempt to stop anyone from providing a service to allow consumers more access to their already freely available content?

If and when it goes beyond New York, Aereo will be royally screwing over all of the local TV network affiliates. I.E. if you watch their stream, you will only see local New York area commercials.

Aereo's defense in that case is that it is fair competition since nothing is stopping the local affiliates from getting into the streaming business themselves.

who has bandwidth to burn for watching tv? i have IPTV from bell canada, and while www access is counted, IPTV data is not counted.but i wish i could watch 25Mbs tv, instead of approx 6 Mbps. thus I am going to try the nightmare of installing an over-the-air antenna to see if it is actually as easy/better than the IPTV version.whats another 250 bucks ( half the price of a high-end graphics card) lol but grimacing...

Essentially a customer leases an antenna with a really long cable to their house.

The devil's advocate here will point out here that your long cable analogy would actually be legal, but Aereo is actually digitally capturing, momentarily recording, and re-transmitting which would be unauthorized copyright infringement for non-private use. This devil's advocate would argue that Aereo's equipment is not a "straight-pipe" between antenna cable and network cable, therefore they are illegally copying the signal to RAM and then again to the network.

haar, if you want to install an OTA antenna, the best that worked for us is nothing more than a piece of coax cable bolted to a coffee can. Gets much better signal than the 10-foot antenna in the attic. Try it out, before you spend $$.

haar, if you want to install an OTA antenna, the best that worked for us is nothing more than a piece of coax cable bolted to a coffee can. Gets much better signal than the 10-foot antenna in the attic. Try it out, before you spend $$.

Does this work for HD with my TV's Tuner? I tried a overly complicated looking antennae and it got no signal whatsoever in my Apartment (my Cell gets nary a signal as well so...)

haar, if you want to install an OTA antenna, the best that worked for us is nothing more than a piece of coax cable bolted to a coffee can. Gets much better signal than the 10-foot antenna in the attic. Try it out, before you spend $$.

OMG I have to try that!!

@haar, I still don't know where the hell your $250 figure is coming from. I've got a cheap-ish DB4 from antennas direct and it works great too.

Yes but you have to have an HDTV with an HD Tuner, *not* just an "HD Ready" HDTV.

The technical name for the tuner in the US is ATSC, whereas old Analog TV was NTSC.

Did you scan for channels or did you just turn to a channel?? If you had a local analog channel "2" and it's now digital channel "2.1" the chances are very slim that it's still broadcasting on channel "2." You can see Wikipedia to find out where your local channels really are. My channel "2" example above is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WFMY you can see that they are actually broadcasting on channel 51 in the digital era. If I ever do a reset on my HDTV, I can hit channel 2 all day long and I will get nothing. Then I can hit 51 and it will tune it in and forward me to 2.1. From then on, I can just hit 2.1 and it will work because the TV is storing this virtual channel data and is still really tuning to 51.

Local TV is supported by commercials, have exclusive market agreements, etc.

Then, cable TV came along, and the locals panicked. They went to Congress and begged for the "Must Carry" rule. They won - if a cable company came to an area, they were required to carry ALL local TV stations.

Then came DISH and DirecTV. They did not offer locals (no extra bandwidth), and operated with an exemption. They had national feeds of the main networks enabled for those who could prove they lived outside of a major city (many used Cousin Luke's dairy farm as their address and "qualified").

The major networks put pressure to force the satellite companies to carry locals. The government caved, giving a deadline for the major metro locals to be carried by satellites. The companies developed and perfected "spot" transmissions to share the valuable bandwidth. Switching to MPEG4 also helped tremendously.

Meanwhile, locals got greedy. In an about-face, they got "must carry" revoked, and now blackmailed cable & satellite companies to PAY for the privilege of carrying their channels. They even forced them to buy useless home-shopping ones to keep big things like ESPN and the locals.

Pathetic. Just pure greed. They're supported by their commercials and market exclusiveness. We desperately need Ala-carte pricing - There are only about 15 networks I want (local & in my DirecTV package). The rest we never watch anything from.

This new trend towards IP Fascism is killing innovation left and right. Companies are claiming increasingly ridiculous patents and copyrights now in order to gain undeserved profit windfalls and suppress legitimate competition. Unless and until Congress takes action and rolls this back, it's only going to continue getting worse. This latest lawsuit is just another step along this slippery slope we're tumbling down.

but i wish i could watch 25Mbs tv, instead of approx 6 Mbps. thus I am going to try the nightmare of installing an over-the-air antenna to see if it is actually as easy/better than the IPTV version.

Nightmare?

Go to a store, buy a $15 antenna, screw it into your TV, and then open a beer and sit on your couch. What is nightmarish about that? I get 31 channels over mine, and the HD stations are spectacular.

Can't speak for the OP, but, in my case, the nightmarish issue was losing the signal any time someone walked in front of the antenna and very crappy reception to begin with. However, putting an antenna on the roof brings in absolutely wonderful reception! That antenna didn't cost $15 and neither did paying someone to climb on top of my roof.

Essentially a customer leases an antenna with a really long cable to their house.

The devil's advocate here will point out here that your long cable analogy would actually be legal, but Aereo is actually digitally capturing, momentarily recording, and re-transmitting which would be unauthorized copyright infringement for non-private use. This devil's advocate would argue that Aereo's equipment is not a "straight-pipe" between antenna cable and network cable, therefore they are illegally copying the signal to RAM and then again to the network.

I think they would argue it is essentially a converter box. Something similar to what is required for digital signal transmission to analog TV.

I'd love access to a fixed point 180 degree OTA sector antenna's set up anywheres in the USA & Canada that could feed sweet OTA HDTV to my Windows Media Center or XBMC+Media-Portal enabled pc with an ATSC tuner over high speed broadband that would just be the ass kickingest idea in a long time.

Gee its too bad Mr. Big Ass Content Owner Corporate Scumbag wants to be a greedy hoarding son of a biatch and deny anyone access to their 'market' from outside their 'market baliwick' just cause the idiot chairman/woman sitting on their board of directors has to answer to their utterly vile disgustingly greedy money grubbing lawyer sic'ing walking vomit comet share holders that really oughta DIAF and let the rest of us enjoy our media unfettered.

but i wish i could watch 25Mbs tv, instead of approx 6 Mbps. thus I am going to try the nightmare of installing an over-the-air antenna to see if it is actually as easy/better than the IPTV version.

Nightmare?

Go to a store, buy a $15 antenna, screw it into your TV, and then open a beer and sit on your couch. What is nightmarish about that? I get 31 channels over mine, and the HD stations are spectacular.

Using OTA signals since the HD/Digital conversion seems to have become increasingly problematic for those who aren't very close to the broadcast source. I've known of suburban locations that could use rabbit-ears and get a half dozen channels who couldn't get ANY stations with those cheap HD antennas, and would have had to resort to installing a large aerial antenna to get any signal. Likewise people further out who needed a large aerial antenna to get a signal in the analog days are pretty much without signal.

I'd love access to a fixed point 180 degree OTA sector antenna's set up anywheres in the USA & Canada that could feed sweet OTA HDTV to my Windows Media Center or XBMC+Media-Portal enabled pc with an ATSC tuner over high speed broadband that would just be the ass kickingest idea in a long time.

Gee its too bad Mr. Big Ass Content Owner Corporate Scumbag wants to be a greedy hoarding son of a biatch and deny anyone access to their 'market' from outside their 'market baliwick' just cause the idiot chairman/woman sitting on their board of directors has to answer to their utterly vile disgustingly greedy money grubbing lawyer sic'ing walking vomit comet share holders that really oughta DIAF and let the rest of us enjoy our media unfettered.

Cablevision argued that it wasn't vulnerable to copyright infringement claims because the user, not Cablevision, was ultimately in control of which programs were recorded and played back using the system. The court agreed, and its reasoning depended on the fact that Cablevision stored a separate physical copy of a program for each user who requested it, rather than storing a single copy and streaming that copy to every user.

This separate copy argument is interesting. I wonder how the law would feel about using a filesystem with block-level dedupe (ZFS, netapp, etc)? You're keeping separate logical copies for each user, but underneath your filesystem may be clever... I suspect the courts would say that's not allowed & force CableVision to use a non-clever filesystem. Funny to think that simply enabling a switch in ZFS, with zero app-level changes, could push you over the line.

iirc, when Amazon introduced their music locker service, they stated that no agreements with the labels + RIAA was necessary b/c they stored a separate copy for each user. Apple, on the other hand, uses shared copies and did seek an agreement before launch.

haar, if you want to install an OTA antenna, the best that worked for us is nothing more than a piece of coax cable bolted to a coffee can. Gets much better signal than the 10-foot antenna in the attic. Try it out, before you spend $$.

Does this work for HD with my TV's Tuner? I tried a overly complicated looking antennae and it got no signal whatsoever in my Apartment (my Cell gets nary a signal as well so...)

Here in Utah all the digital TV signals are in the UHF band, so I can't say whether this antenna design is any good for VHF signals (and I suspect it isn't). We still have a government-coupon converter box, but if your TV accepts coaxial from antenna and does the ATSC decoding itself, it should work fine. It's best to have the antenna near a window, I think. I don't think direction really matters, because the coffee can is usually sitting open end down.

I do. I have no useful source of course, but, I do have the bandwidth.

This writing on the wall is the main reason the cable companies have all been implementing usage caps over the last few years. If you can watch TV on your internet connection, why pay for cable TV too?

So wait, how is this legally different than that Zediva DVD player streaming? My understanding was that every user would have rented access from a dedicated DVD player, and the video would be streamed.

haar, if you want to install an OTA antenna, the best that worked for us is nothing more than a piece of coax cable bolted to a coffee can. Gets much better signal than the 10-foot antenna in the attic. Try it out, before you spend $$.

Does this work for HD with my TV's Tuner? I tried a overly complicated looking antennae and it got no signal whatsoever in my Apartment (my Cell gets nary a signal as well so...)

I had the same issue and bought one off of Amazon called "Paper Thin Leaf Indoor HDTV Antenna". Its a 3' length of coax attached to a Denny's plastic placemat(well reminds me of one anyhow). Taped it to the wall above the tv and it works great. Gave one to my brother and it works better than the 10' metal antenna he has on the roof of his house. Worth the $39.

Why does the antenna matter in the first place? This is over-the-air audio/video which is available to everyone for free. Why would broadcasters attempt to stop anyone from providing a service to allow consumers more access to their already freely available content?

This is nuts.

+1Further it by stating that the MAFIAA will never ever see another penny from my wallet and I mean business.If I can't buy it used then I will just pass and read a book.I own a huge 1300 piece library.I no longer care what comes out of that Industry at all.

So wait, how is this legally different than that Zediva DVD player streaming? My understanding was that every user would have rented access from a dedicated DVD player, and the video would be streamed.

Difference is anyone one the internet with access to the array would be able to make use of the OTA signals. All you'd need would be to pay an access fee to use the connection on the downstream. Not all area's have a good OTA reception on the UHF bands that are now being used by HDTV broadcasts. This arrangement would give people more options at hopfully much lower fees than if they got cable or satellite. But of course as you well know... Big content doesn't like that because hey they're losing money. See corporations do not care about people. Money is the answer to everything."As long as I'm filthy rich; you peasants don't matter" corporate mentality. Yanno its sickening when money is worth more value than lives.